Eastman Johnson, Later Years

"Ethel Eastman Johnson Conkling with Fan"

"Despite his interest in building ties with the younger generation, Eastman Johnson was quite conscious of being very much a member of his own advancing one. He probably realized that he would never again undertake a figure subject as ambitious as 'The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket.' Under the weight of that gargantuan effort he had written: 'I am trying to get some work done. The harder I try, the more I can't.' 

 

The question as to what he would do was answered quite naturally with his very deliberate rededication to the practice of portraiture. For forty years he had made his way as an artist who aspired always to reinvent himself, but with his talents as a portraitist in great demand by a roster of eminent figures, it may have been too tempting to settle into a more predictable routine. 

 

In his later years, though he seldom chose to display it in his commissioned portrait work, Johnson continued to be capable of achieving the expressive intensity that is so strikingly apparent in his 'Old Man, Seated.' He occasionally even dipped into new aesthetic waters, as in his striking portrait of Ethel as a young woman, painted about 1895, perhaps to mark the moment of her impending marriage to Ronald Conkling in 1896. The treatment of the hands and the use of the thin veils of color in the landscape backdrop suggest that Johnson may have studied the work of Degas on one of his extended European visits."

 

"Old Man, Seated" by Eastman Johnson

 

To be continued

 

(Excerpts from "Eastman Johnson: Painting America" by Teresa Carbone and Patricia Hills.)